By MICHAEL KUNZELMAN (Associated Press)
A retired firefighter who threw a fireplace extinguisher at cops throughout the U.S. Capitol riot was sentenced on Tuesday to greater than 4 years in jail.
Robert Sanford struck two cops within the head with the hearth extinguisher that he threw as he stormed the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, with a mob of Donald Trump supporters. He additionally threw an orange visitors cone at a Capitol police sergeant.
“Sanford also hurled obscenities and insults at the law enforcement officers on the Lower West Terrace, calling them ‘traitors,’” a prosecutor, Janani Iyengar, wrote in a court docket submitting.
One of the officers struck by the hearth extinguisher had a bump and swelling on his head; the opposite had a headache and went to a hospital for a medical examination, prosecutors mentioned.
U.S. District Judge Paul Friedman sentenced Sanford to 4 years and 4 months in jail adopted by three years of supervised launch, based on a web based court docket file. Federal prosecutors had beneficial a jail sentence of 5 years and 11 months.
Sanford, 57, of Boothwyn, Pennsylvania, labored as a firefighter for 26 years earlier than retiring in 2020. A fireplace extinguisher is “an instrument that he was uniquely familiar with and should have known how much damage it could cause,” the prosecutor wrote.
Sanford traveled to Washington, D.C., with pals from Pennsylvania on bus journey organized by the conservative activist group Turning Point USA. He listened to speeches at Trump’s “Stop the Steal” rally earlier than becoming a member of the group that marched over to the Capitol and disrupted the joint session of Congress for certifying Democrat Joe Biden’s electoral victory over Trump.
Sanford was arrested on Jan. 14, 2021. He has been jailed since he pleaded responsible final September to assaulting, resisting or impeding cops utilizing a harmful weapon — a felony punishable by a most of 20 years in jail. He wasn’t accused of coming into the Capitol constructing on Jan. 6.
Sanford started to work with a specialist in cult deprogramming in August 2022 and was confronted with “facts” in regards to the baseless conspiracy concept that Democrats stole the 2020 presidential election from Trump, based on protection legal professional Andrew Stewart.
“Even after he was incarcerated, he participated in regular discussions designed to challenge his ideology and belief structure, then help him understand how and why he developed the beliefs that led him to make the decisions that he did on January 6,” Stewart wrote in a court docket submitting.
Sanford believed that police had attacked him and others with out provocation when he picked up and threw what felt like an empty fireplace extinguisher, his lawyer mentioned.
“Certainly, this is not a justification for his action nor is it intended to be,” Stewart wrote.
More than 1,000 folks have been charged with federal crimes associated to the Jan. 6 riot. Over 600 of them have pleaded responsible or been convicted after trials determined by a jury or choose. Over 450 of them have been sentenced, with over half getting phrases of imprisonment starting from seven days to 10 years.
More than 100 cops had been injured throughout the Jan. 6 riot.
Also on Tuesday, Nevada a person who joined different rioters in assaulting cops in a tunnel on the Capitol’s Lower West Terrace was sentenced to 6 years in jail. U.S. District Court Judge Carl J. Nichols additionally ordered Josiah Kenyon, 35, of Winnemucca, Nevada, to pay over $43,000 in restitution for damaging a window on the Capitol on Jan. 6.
Kenyon was dressed because the character Jack Skellington from the film “The Nightmare Before Christmas” when he joined the mob’s assault. He used a desk leg with a protruding nail to strike an officer within the leg and hit a second officer so arduous that it lodged within the officer’s face defend and helmet, prosecutors mentioned.
Prosecutors beneficial a jail sentence of seven years and 4 months for Kenyon, who pleaded responsible to assault costs in September 2022.
Kenyon drove to Washington from Reno, Nevada along with his spouse and younger youngsters to attend Trump’s rally. Kenyon instructed FBI brokers that he hated Trump and went to the Capitol as a result of he was “trying to raise the violence level,” prosecutors wrote, including, “His idea was to have ‘the Trumpers’ charge the police line which would in turn cause the officers to shoot the rioters.”
Source: www.bostonherald.com”